The UnReal Times correspondent Atul Baskarbe brings you the story of the PM’s response, in pictures.

For the last time.

Kejriwal: This is the victory of the country’s people

Hello, this is Ravish Kumar speaking

Disclaimer: No hint intended

(Image sources: 2a, 2b, 3a, 3c, 10b, 12b)

( Click on image for better view )

We calmed him down and reminded him that he’s a figment of our imagination and doesn’t actually exist, after which he quietened and put together this one last Facebook wall for the benefit our beloved readers. Here goes:

We have decided to shut down The UnReal Times (URT) website. What was fondly referred to as India’s favourite satire and humour portal, mostly by those running the site, will post its last article on the 30th of November, 2016.

Some of you may be surprised by this sudden announcement. Some may be asking ‘Why, URT, why?’ A handful of you may be sobbing inconsolably (Get a grip, Ashwin). The majority of you will in all likelihood go ‘Meh’ and turn to the Twitter timeline of arguably the better satirist, Arvind Kejriwal.

Regardless of how you might react to this announcement, on behalf of all our writers, we would like to tell you folks that it has been a privilege entertaining you, making you smile and once in a while, making you go ‘Dawg, that’s deep’. For over five years we did this, and boy, did we have a ball! Through this platform, we met wonderful people and some extremely talented writers, who wrote for us week after week expecting nothing in return apart from the opportunity to be read, and the secret hope of a massive payday from BJP President Amit Shah for services rendered. (Okay, maybe the latter part was just us.)

But now, it is time to move on.

We have thought long and hard about how we’d break it to you; how we’d explain the ‘why’ of it. Somewhere, we feel that we are letting you down by not running this site anymore. For a brief moment, we were tempted to blame PM Modi’s demonetization for our decision, along with rising intolerance and Donald Trump’s election as US President. Thankfully, a sanctimonious Rajdeep Sardesai tweet popped up on our Twitter timeline exactly at that moment and the thought vanished from our minds as quickly as cash disappears from an ATM these days.

Perhaps it’s better to describe what happened in our recent team meeting when we decided to list all our full time members…

“Well, there’s me, for starters,” said Karthik, writing down his name on a sheet of paper painstakingly, drawing out the moment for as long as he could, while Ashwin nodded vigorously.

“Then there is you,” he added, writing down Ashwin’s full name including his middle name below his own.

“Right, right,” nodded Ashwin sagely.

The two satirists then looked at each other for a few moments.

“Uh,” said Karthik, turning to the paper again, “then there is Mark Zuckerpandian…”

Ashwin fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Um, but, uh, Karthik, he… uh… doesn’t exist,” he said. “He’s unreal… you know that… you were the one who made him up.”

Karthik sighed deeply.

“Yeah, I know.”

Gallows humour aside, we want to express our heartfelt thanks to our incredible readers for the love and affection – you really are the reason why we came this far; our awesome columnists – you made URT what it is, and we are proud to have published your often hilarious, sometimes hard-hitting and always meaningful posts on this platform; the many politicians, journalists and other celebrities from all walks of life who have appreciated our work. We will always cherish the kind words you had for us. Special thanks to Dr. Subramanian Swamy for his very generous praise on several occasions and to Dr. Bibek Debroy for supporting us and sharing our work from the very beginning.

It may be curtains for the website, but we will continue to write humour, perhaps more than ever. We plan to come out with books and short stories a lot more frequently. We’ll also be active on Twitter and Facebook, sometimes to badger you to buy our books (Please don’t mute us!), but mostly to entertain you with our headlines, FB snippets and comics.

To conclude this letter, allow us to quote the great Ravi Shastri: Ladies and gentlemen, we have had a fabulous 5 years. Over 100 writers participated, over 4000 articles were written, and it can only be said that in the end, the game of satire is the real winner!

Best,
Team URT.

PS: If you really want to know why we are shutting down, READ OUR BOOK! (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

(Image via tellychakkar.com)

Asanshol, November 31st. 

In a startling incident, a budding playback singer resting under a portrait of Kishore Kumar in the recording studio got a mysterious, tight slap today.

“It was spooky”, gasped Bitto (whose real name is Bewda Autotunerwallah), the rising star. “I’d just finished recording the re-mixed version of the remixed version of the evergreen melody ‘Pal pal dil ke paas…‘. Just before that I’d recorded similarly re-mixed versions of the re-mixed versions of other evergreens like ‘Dil me chhupa loonga…‘ and even ‘Mahi ve‘. I’m a teetotaller and hence was exhausted after the marathon sessions of singing in an sleepy-constipated-drunkard’s voice to give my voice the “right” feel. I was grabbing a nap on the chair below Kishoreda’s portrait in the empty waiting hall, and all of a sudden I got the tightest slap I’ve ever got in my life. I swear, there was no one around. Just me and the portrait. Could it really have been….?” his voice tapered off, his right cheek swollen and ear still buzzing with an audible beep from the trauma.

Too good to sound true, this reporter attempted to contact the spirit of the timeless mercurial legend with some help from the internet. In a major breakthrough, the Kishoreda’s spirit made a “connect” with this reporter and conveyed the frustrations of the legends of bygone eras. “Spirits really don’t exist, but solely for this one reason, God has made an exception”, he said. “SD, Panchamda, and a score of illustrious playback singers and lyricists have conveyed their frustrations over the rape of their legacies over the last few years- especially even the credits being usurped by these good-for-nothing-unoriginal-thankless-young chaps. I felt a wee bit disappointed after slapping that young man earlier today, but please understand that it was on behalf of our entire generation from the 70′s and 80′s… and no one else but me would probably do it. All those pent-up emotions were concentrated in that slap, hence it was way much tighter than I’d intended. It’s not just about copyright… its about the art. I hope you understand”.

Last heard, several scared new-age singers and composers were scurrying to get photos of yesteryears’ legends off the walls in their homes and studios; some complained of sore bottoms and discovered photos of their “idols” in their wallets, which they promptly got rid of. A few, on the other hand, were seen doing silent “aartis” (sans their singing) to the photos, in a bid to placate emotions.

“It’s like overnight demonetisation for us new-age musicians”, commented a notorious plagiariser-cum-jugde of several reality shows. This is going to cause serious inconvenience to the common man. Imagine their sorry plight when they’ll be forced to listen to our original tunes 24×7! They’ll soon beg for mercy” he sneered.

As per preliminary statistics, song output in Bollywood is expected to drop by 86% over the next few weeks, hopefully marking an end of a mindless era of stolen ‘inspired’ works.

“We all were worried. Kirandeep is a very outspoken guy who moved to Bangalore recently and works 24×7, not leaving his seat even for a minute. We searched for him everywhere, under the receptionist’s table, inside the drawer of everyone’s cubicle, behind flower pots and in fact even in the women’s toilet which was indeed our last hope,” said Kumar, his project manager. “We don’t have CCTVs in office because the ones who come inside never leave office due to work,” he added.

Kirandeep Singh was later found inside the Security Guard’s toilet, murmuring “Why Delhi why!”

“Why do people have to talk about politics every day?”, Kirandeep later wailed, when inquired about the reason. “Ho gayi saalo galti usey laake, maine akele ni diya tha vote, sabne diya tha, ab kya jaan loge! Nahi hu bc main Dilli ka [Yes, we made a mistake bringing him. It wasn't just me who voted for him, everyone did. Now, will you kill me?],” he added, visibly infuriated. Kirandeep is now planning to start a petition to change the name of Delhi so that people like him can answer “I’m not from Delhi” whenever there is any conversation related to Kejriwal.

Meanwhile, the HR departments of a number of companies have finally added a new policy after nearly 3 decades of copy pasting from other organizations. The policy states that “No one will mention Arvind Kejriwal’s name during office hours as it can lead to disputes, low employee morale and sudden disappearance of people”. HR personnel have also thanked Kirandeep Singh as they now have a major achievement to show just before the appraisal season.

(Reported by Citizen Satirist Manish Paul. He blogs here)

(Image via indusage.com.au)

The demonetisation drive, which the government has undertaken to abolish black money by the common sense logic of abolishing money, has brought a lot of focus on mobile wallets.

In these times of currency crunch, mobile wallets are a godsend as they offer the harried citizens a viable choice to blame somebody else other than just the government. The point is without having to go to your bank or stand in an ATM queue, using mobile-wallets you can still access your money and proceed to use it before the government gets any more new ideas to get it.

When you talk of mobile wallets there is a lot of confusion, but the good news is: the confusion is admittedly a lot lesser to the one now surrounding the use of actual money.

To understand how mobile wallets work and how best it can be used by the common man, I spent, for research purposes, an entire day on the internet, during which I was able to read one full article relevant to the subject while I managed to chat with several of my friends on Facebook and Twitter and read plenty of unrelated stuff.

But here is the deal with the mobile wallets: They operate on the simple but sound principle that is at the core of all modern corporate management philosophy: The consumer is not a moron. He is actually a complete dolt.

Okay, just kidding. Mobile wallets are just digital versions of your regular wallet, except that your regular wallet can be picked by robbers and you may lose all its contents, whereas your digital wallet cannot be stolen at railway stations or markets or any other crowded place, but — this is the beauty of modern technology — it can still be breached and you run the risk of losing not just its contents but your entire bank savings.

Well, that is also a highly distorted definition of mobile wallets. We will have a go at it one final time: Mobile wallets, as the name makes it obvious, are about using your regular wallet to make payments to banks or credit card companies that will help you pay the mobile wallet company which will help you carry out your online (or even offline) transactions.

From what I gathered during my research, a lot of people are quite wary of parting with the details of their debit or credit cards for online transactions. So to avoid the understandable unease of using debit/credit cards on e-commerce sites, mobile-wallet companies are offering a smart alternative: You can use the same credit/debit cards on mobile-wallet companies’ site. They are, in essence, e-commerce sites that help you to shop at — why not? — other e-commerce sites.

The thing is when you register your card details and transfer funds to a mobile-wallet company, it immediately creates, for safety purposes, an ‘escrow account’, as mandated by the RBI, yes, the same RBI that has just now ‘banned’ your own money that was all along lying safely with you. So basically you can forget safety wherever your money is parked.

Mobile-wallet companies say they don’t use the details you provide anywhere else and also assure that they have high-end technology to prevent ‘digital theft’, which is very comforting till you realise that these companies are mostly funded by venture capitalists who exist to confirm that there is no God in this world.

Anyway, mobile wallet companies make much of their money — you may want to write this down — by losing it.

Let me elaborate: When you, say, recharge your DTH connection in an offline retail shop, you pay the recharge amount and the retailer passes on the money to the DTH service provider and gets a small commission for the same. But online, things are much more evolved. You transfer the DTH recharge amount via your debit/credit card to the mobile-wallet company and it —- remember this is something designed by highly-rated MBAs and technical wizards — gives you cashback, sometimes more than the actual amount you paid it. The mobile-wallet company also gives you bonus points using which you can acquire more bonus points that are quite helpful to get even more valuable points, which can be eventually redeemed for nobody knows what. The amount of unredeemable bonus points is more than the amount of black money in this country.

Whatever may be the pros and cons of mobile-wallet companies, more and more people are finding them useful and their market in India is expected to grow. The current Indian market size for m-wallets stands at about Rs 350 crore and is estimated to rise to Rs 1,210 crore by 2019 by which time your local ATMs should have, hopefully, become operational again.

Asanshol, November 31st.

In an unexpected turn of events, makers of the superhit 2001 movie “Nayak” have announced that they may sue PM Mr. Modi over “stolen” super-duper-hit ideas. 

In a press conference, ace director Shankar said, “We realize that several ideas such as firm, no-nonsense governance, scaring the shit out of black money hoarding scums and making them suffer the most, and putting performance over sycophancy in babudom were non-existent concepts in India. We were the ones to first pioneer such radical measures in our landmark movie. Hence we deserve royalties from the Government from the recent windfall they’ve had from their plagiarised steps, and if they don’t comply, we may consider exploring the legal route.”

Close on Nayak‘s heels, in a trademark attempt-to-shock-and-awe revelation, AAP supremo and movie reviewer Mr Arvind Kejriwal has accused Nayak-makers of ‘stealing’ his own life story before they happened in real life.

“There is a strong similarity between the public emotion-fuelled victory of Anil Kapoor and myself as CMs, Anil Kapoor and me as common man, Anil Kapoor and me screwing up sacrificing our otherwise promising, well-settled careers because of thunderous public demand, Anil Kapoor being hated by Modi evil political villains… and if you consider what all are about to follow in my life, including the several nasty attempts made on Anil Kapoorji’s and my lives, the resemblance between the story of Nayak and my life is too much to be a coincidence! Obviously, those Nayak-guys made my biopic in 2001 without even telling me! Astrologers, Modiji, Nayak, sab mile hue hain!” He thundered, swatting an imaginary dengue-mosquito in a bid to convey that it was an assassin sent by Modi.

BSP supremo Mayawati, mum over Nayak all these years, has also revealed that she had sleepless nights over the cult-classic scene of Amrish Puri being interviewed by Anil Kapoor. “I had nightmares about me being interviewed by Arnab Goswami. The scene, the dialogues, the responses, the outcomes, everything could have exactly been the same as shown in that wretched movie!” Needless to say, she has joined hands with Kejriwal in his crusade for justice.

Rahul Gandhi has slammed the entire situation in general after discovering that he doesn’t fit in anywhere in this movie-hype. “I am being ignored on purpose,” he said, speaking to a group of uninterested youngsters patiently awaiting their turn at an ATM. “Neither am I any CM or PM, nor is anyone showing any interest in making in a movie on me. Sarkaar mujhse dari hui hai,” he attempted, before repeating that the situation created in general was “not inclusive enough.”

The final word of the day came for AAP stalwart the Ashutosh. Inspired by his boss, he tweeted his own review: Saw the Nayak based on Modi. Too much dirty politics and violins. Will the Khalnayak Modi answer? He later deleted the tweet and posted ”Saw the Nayak based on Kejriwalji. Wot a moovie! Proud of pAAP. He later deleted the tweet on realising the “pAAP” typo.

In the spirit of this occasion, we in Crank’s News, who take our irresponsible journalism pretty seriously, have come up with five WhatsApp message that you should be forthwith forwarding to all the groups your are part of so that by tomorrow morning these will be actual news all the newspapers and channels.

1) Is demonetisation a monetisation for Adani?

“Friends, this is confirmed as fact by a colleague’s cousin who is working as a senior-level secretary in the Finance Ministry. He says the Adanis, who are very close to the Modigovernment, and are actually funding not just the BJP but also the entire government, have recently taken over a chocolate factory in Gujarat. The factory is into the manufacture of all kinds of toffees, candies. These are typically the eclairs-types chocolates that shopkeepers give in lieu of small change.

My colleague’s cousin says that what we take to be the demonetisation move by the Modigovernment is a move to monetise the chocolates that Adanis are now manufacturing.  Even in normal times, shopkeepers give these candies for change, and in these change-starved times, this is going to get even more pronounced.

So let us realise what the government is really trying to do here through demonetisationand that rich businessman are the ones calling the shots and cheating poor gullible public. Those who think that demonetisation is a sweet news may not know the real fact.

The above is a fwd from another group”.

2) India the first country to abolish rich and corrupt totally

“Forward this to all the other patriotic Indians:

According to a recent report in the US magazine Business Insider, India has now become the first country in the world to have abolished the rich people (sic) and officially every one in India is middle-class now.

The report, quoting latest statistics from the IMF, has said that Modi’s masterstroke demonetisation has totally made all Indians, including the poor and the rich, truly middle-class, along with those who are already middle-class. The magazine has also quoted Frank X McNamara, the ‘inventor of credit cards’, as saying that India’s Prime Minister NarendraModi has pulled off what all economists of the world have been wanting to do for long. The use of credit cards will increase and there will be no difference between the rich and the poor as both will be in huge debts”.

3) How Modi brought Ratan Tata and Naval chief to fall in line

“Interesting True Story This:

A friend’s wife was standing in a long queue in front of an ATM in South Bandra, Mumbai. Standing next to her were two well-dressed gentlemen who quietly went about minding their own business. There were murmurs of discontent from some others in the line at having to stand in the queue for withdrawing their own money.

Hearing this one of the two gentlemen, smiled quietly, and said that standing in a line is a good way to understand the value of hard-earned money. To this the other well-dressed person agreed wholeheartedly and said that there are also people out there on the high seas without any access to ATMs. We are actually lucky to have ATMs near where we live.

The first gentleman, who nodded his headed in approval, said that is very true and introduced himself to the other. ‘I am Ratan Tata,’ he said. The other offered his hand in a firm handshake and said, ‘I am Sunil Lanba. I work in Indian Navy. I am its Chief Admiral’.

The rest in the line went silent after this.

Friends, this is true simplicity. And thanks Modi for making the country understand this.

Send this to your near and dear to make them feel inspired”.

4) Trump to outsource management of US economy to Modi

“India’s contribution to the world economy is economy:

After years of Indians looking in awe of the Americans, now the tide has turned in favour of India. It is no secret that American President (sic) Donald Trump always likes to follow the footsteps of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Trump had used the same technique in campaigning that Modi used to defeat Sonia to get the better of Hillary Clinton. Trump understood that both Sonia and Hillary Clinton were essentially both women and hence copied the same strategy.

And now comes the most interesting part. With India’s economy being the fastest growing one in the entire world and the US economy struggling, there are expectations that Trump may ask Modi’s help, and if need be demeonetise US currency, to help shore up his country’s economy. Both dollar and rupee, if Trump has his way, may start sharing the same symbol soon.

Economy, which comes from the ancient Sanskrit word ‘eko’ which means ‘one’ and ‘nomy‘ that signifies ‘currency’, may soon have one single currency as predicted by our scholars who gave economy to the world.

MODI truly is Man Of Demonetised India”

5) Urjit Patel and Mukesh Ambani are twins

FaceOff: Urjit Patel and Mukesh Ambani presenting different facial features to hide the fact that they are actually twins.

“What your mainstream media will not tell you?

How many of you in the group know that RBI Governor Urjit Patel and Reliance Chief Mukesh Ambani are not only related but are actually twins?

What your mainstream media will also not report is that Rajdeep Sardesai’s wife Sagarika Ghose, who writes every anti-Modi story that you find in all newspapers, is actually the long-lost granddaughter of former Prime Minister Indra Gandhi.

Here is the proof. Check their hairstyles:

Send these to all Indians who truly believe they are Indians”.

(Originally published on Crank’s Corner)

(Image via intoday.in)

Dr Manmohan Singh is back with a bang and how!! After his hard-hitting speech in Parliament in which Dr Singh blasted the Modi regime’s demonetization drive, the former Prime Minister is being wooed by none other than Arvind Kejriwal to become AAP’s Punjab CM candidate. If Dr Singh takes the bait, political pundits opine that it could bolster AAP’s chances of grabbing power in Punjab.

AAP has been criticized for not naming its CM candidate thus far. Kejriwal is also being painted as an outsider who wants to willy-nilly become Punjab CM after handing over Delhi to Sisodiya. Kejri on the other hand is reluctant to name a CM candidate. That would create a rival power center and Kejri understandably doesn’t want a repeat of the Yogendra Yadav-Prashant Bhushan fiasco.

Who can Kejri trust? Naming someone from his coteries is a non-starter – Announcing The Ashutosh as CM candidate would ensure that AAP candidates would lose their deposit in all the seats. Sanjay Singh’s tharki ways make Bill Clinton look like a priest. And even Hafiz Saeed is more popular than Ashish Khetan in Punjab.

To make matters worse, after months of intense negotiations, Sidhu has ditched AAP and hitched his bandwagon to the Congress. The signs aren’t good – TrollKejri gets more RTs than Kejri, Sardesai is back to wooing Sonia, even Rahul seems to be edging ahead. And that’s why announcing Dr Manmohan Singh as AAP’s Punjab CM candidate is, to paraphrase the great Shastri, ‘just what the doctor ordered’. For one, AAP’s CM candidate will be a true blue Punjabi, a Sikh, and that too a former PM!! On the other hand, Kejri can go to sleep easy with the remote control firmly in his hand. In fact, by adopting the 10 Janpath formula of diarchy, Kejri can continue to wield power in both Punjab and Delhi, while having the time and space for Vipasna sessions in Bengaluru, Friday movie reviews and campaigning in Goa. It’s a win-win deal.

Insiders say Sonia has agreed to let Kejri borrow Dr Manmohan Singh. To defeat Modi in 2019, AAP needs to come to power in Punjab in 2017. And for that, Sonia is willing to lose Punjab. So under the new arrangement, Dr Singh will report to Kejriwal as well as Sonia.

However, Dr Singh has placed a few conditions of his own before transferring allegiance to Kejriwal. One, Monty must be made Deputy Chairman of the Punjab Planning Commission. Two, Dr Singh must be given complete freedom in formulating Punjab’s 5 year plans. Three, he will not be required to campaign during the polls.

Kejriwal has accepted these conditions. Looks like Indian politics is all set to enter a new epoch.